It’s quite a damning report when you think about it.
Especially when you consider the amount of success we’ve had when it comes to producing young players in the past, for us to get to a situation like this doesn’t make for good reading.
According to a report from the CIES Football Observatory, Sheffield United are one of the worst offenders this season when it comes to giving minutes to our up and comers, with 0% of our minutes being given to players who are under the age of 22 during the league campaign. The only exception to this rule has been Panos Retsos who played 14 minutes in our F.A Cup game away to Reading in January.
And whilst it would be harsh of me to criticise the decision too much given that we appear to have made it work given our place in the league, I do fear that we are somewhat sacrificing the future in order for us to make short-term gains.
I wrote recently about how the club needs to explore the option of using more of the club’s youngsters in the months ahead, and I think that this report should really make the club look at the idea a little more seriously.
Should the club be utilising more of our young players next season?
Yes
No
Whilst it’s great that we’ve done well with the team we have at our disposal, I do think that the club does need to look after the future of the club at the same time, and by giving our academy players some vital minutes at the end of games would be a great way to go about doing that.
It shouldn’t have taken the idea of extra substitutions for it to get to this stage, ideally it should have been happening anyway, but when football does start up again, we need to be doing better when it comes to looking after the future of the club by letting the youngsters get some game time.
Otherwise we might not have a future of the club to fall back on.